Share “Big banks, under pressure, on defense at...”

Big banks, under pressure, on defense at Davos

Published on NewsOK
Modified: January 23, 2013 at 5:38 pm •
Published: January 23, 2013

Advertisement

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — If there is one place bankers should be able to let down their guard a little, you would think it would be at the World Economic Forum in Davos, an exclusive gathering of 2,500 of the globe's financial and corporate elite.

James Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer JP Morgan Chase and Co, left, and Axel A. Weber, Chairman of the Board of Directors UBS, right, gestures during a panel session on the first day of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Keystone, Jean-Christophe Bott)

Yet even here top banking executives found themselves on the defensive. It's a reflection of how big banks — blamed by some politicians and the public for the 2007 financial crisis and the resulting Great Recession — are still grappling with pressure from recent scandals and moves toward increasingly complex and tighter regulation.

During a panel discussion on global finance at the forum, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon criticized the "huge misinformation" about the risks actually posed by banks.

He and other top bankers at the discussion, including UBS chairman Axel Weber, found themselves stressing that that banks play an essential role in making economies grow — by lending to businesses so they can invest and expand.

"Banks continue to lend and grow and expand, finance is a critical part of the how the economy is run," he said at an all-star panel where he was challenged both by a top International Monetary Fund official and a hedge fund manager, whose firm is a client of Dimon's bank.

"Everyone I know is trying to do a very good job for their clients," Dimon said.

There have been plenty of negative headlines and investigations over the last year that show banking in a far harsher light: Several top banks are under investigation for rigging key interest rates, HSBC has been fined for allowing money-laundering and Standard Chartered has been penalized for dealing with Iran. Even Dimon's own bank has suffered an embarrassing $6 billion trading loss on complex derivatives.

All of which has only given ammunition to the critics who say banks are too loosely regulated, too unethical and still so large that their collapse would threaten the economy.

Governments and regulators have moved to clamp down on banks and their risky practices since 2007. In the United States, legislation known as Dodd-Frank seeks to avoid taxpayer-funded bailouts of banks by barring them from engaging in risky trading on their own account. The European Union is considering proposals to have banks separate their riskier investment banking operations from the rest of their business. Meanwhile, the British government is moving toward a different proposal to require banks to "ring-fence" their retail banking within their organization.

Beyond that, banks are also being required to hold more financial padding against possible losses through an international agreement known as Basel III.

However, the push to regulate leaves many dissatisfied. Critics of the banking industry claim that some of the new measures — such as requirements to hold capital buffers against losses — were in fact around ahead of the 2007 crisis but were ineffective as banks found ways around them.

Banks themselves agree that the capital measures are needed, but they are concerned that, because these new rules are often being imposed on a national or regional basis, they can overlap for banks that do business in more than one country. And there is no one global standard that would level the playing field, and prevent banks from simply moving their operations to places that allowed high-risk practices.